Presently, to the extent that traffic control devices (e.g. stop lights) rely upon sensed vehicles to govern the state of traffic control signals, they are limited to sensing a vehicle passing within a detection range of a magnetic sensor. Thus, a single car approaching a red light in an intersection may instantaneously disrupt the flow of a long line of vehicles currently passing through the intersection in the green light. Many would consider fundamentally unreasonable that a single vehicle approaching a traffic device-controlled intersection can instantly disrupt flow of a large number of vehicles currently having a right of way through the controlled intersection. Especially if the large number of vehicles endured several minutes in heavy traffic to merely approach the intersection.
Proliferation of smart phones, and their use to perform an ever-increasing number of applications, has resulted in substantial increases in the percentage of vehicles having at least one occupant connected to, and communicating with, mobile wireless network infrastructure (e.g., cell towers, small cells, femto cells, etc.). It stands to reason that use of mobile wireless devices may even increase as vehicle traffic congestion rises due to users consulting a variety of traffic route segment congestion reporting and alternative route determination aids. Whenever such devices connect to, and communicate with, the mobile wireless network infrastructure, a potential to determine a current location of such communicating devices exists.
For example, highways and streets in urban and suburban regions exhibit high in-vehicle smart phone utilization during routine workday commuting intervals. It is possible to identify the geospatial location of each mobile wireless device user with a relatively high degree of precision (i.e., within several feet) while the users are traveling in a moving vehicle, of relative geospatial position coherence among vehicles traveling in a same direction, especially in heavy road traffic conditions wherein the vehicles likely travel at slow absolute speed.